Alice Question 1: In what way does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our final music video uses, develops and challenges typical forms and conventions of music videos, particularly because we have a girl band, which is unusual with our indie pop music genre.

Conventions of our music video:
I have created an annotated version of our music video on youtube, outlining the conventions of music videos, much of which fits in with Vernallis theory, that we have used in our own.

As mentioned in the annotations video above, the themes of films used in our projection allowed us to represent the lead singer in an interesting way. The audience may not understand every reference but the relationship between the projection and the music video may be interpreted in different ways by the audience. Here is a video of our whole projection reel:

Challenges:
We are an indie pop band, which is not a mainstream genre, and also not often associated with a female band. Although there are female fronted indie bands, it is often the case that the band members are male. We challenged this as every member of our band is female, but we also challenged the typical roles of female artists, by not being overly feminine, meaning we had to think about our image and branding carefully. We decided on deco-grunge clothes in order to ensure we seemed feminine, but with an edge; this included denim shorts, black dresses, lots of chains, and chunky boots, which became a significant part of our outfit. It is clear we are not only marketed through our identity, but also the music, which is key to our band. 

Here is an image showing the outfits we decided on
in one set up of the video; dresses, and chunky boots. 

From looking at other female fronted indie bands, we took some of the inspiration for our infinite white setting in the hospital scenes, from Florence and the Machine's video for 'You've got the love,' in which she uses infinite white to represent a dreamlike set up. 




The gif on the left shows a clip from You've got the love which we took inspiration from, and the gif on the right is a clip it gave inspiration from. 



We took inspiration from the start of the project in order to influence our set ups within the video, our performance and our style. We took inspiration from 'This is Gospel' by Panic at the Disco for our hospital scenes, and looked into other female artists to influence our attitude and style.


The gif on the left shows a clip from This is Gospel that we took inspiration from and the gif on the right is our scene that was infuenced by it. 






Our music video was for a debut album for our band which meant it was important to stand out, and hook the audience. We felt our image, and the name of our band was quite catchy and made us seem 'different' to other bands of the indie genre. Our name 'Chaos killed the Dinosaur' is a reference from a film Heathers, associated with a girl that spirals out of control, and this reference fits in with Arianna and her role as the crazy lead singer.

Website:On our website we followed conventions typical to most artist websites and we took inspiration from other artist websites, especially Lorde and Lady Gaga. 

The image above is of our website on the left, and Lady Gaga'a website, that we took inspiration on the right and the conventions of websites followed on each.

Conventions of artist websites followed on our website:

• Band member profiles
• Tour dates
• Social media links - facebook, twitter and instagram
• Photo albums
• Downloads
• Competitions
• News and info 
• Consistent branding colours
• Album cover and pre-order links available on every page

The website was designed on Wix, a flash based website rather than a website built with HTML code, which meant the website was easy to create, and navigate but at the same time limited our possibilities with the website. Our branding and image continued onto the website, with our black and red band colours.

Album Cover:
To decide on what we wanted the album cover to look like as a group, we first all sat down with pictures we liked and that inspired us, along with other album covers. As a group, we wanted something unique and different to conventional female artist album covers. Typical female artist band covers usually have a front cover image of  the whole band, however ours is a close up of the lead singer underwater. 

On the left is a gif of the front, back, and inside covers of our album cover, and on the right is images and other album covers we took inspiration from. 



 
Conventions followed:

• Band name and album title down the spine
• Song names on the back
• Album and band name on the front cover
• Band colours creating branding
• Institutional info including barcode, record company label, website
• Bold, eye-catching photos

On the back of our album cover we used a bold photo of Arianna, our lead singer, topless but without sexualising her body. We decided to take a non-sexualised photo due to lessons we had in class on how females are portrayed in the media, and we wanted to challenge the convention that females are portrayed as 'sexy' and very 'feminine'. The water theme was consistent across the album cover and we felt the neutral expressions on all members of the band stood out (as a debut album must) and would catch a viewers attention. 

Alice Question 2: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

I think that our combination of our main product and ancillary texts works effectively and brands our band, creating an explicit artist identity and creating synergy across our 3 texts. We wanted our music video to introduce us as a new indie band, and show the audience that our lead singer was the lead singer, dominating the other band members. We wanted our music video to help promote our band website in order to bring in the audience and generate revenue through the website, making it important to create a consistent brand across an integrated marketing campaign.

We took influences from other bands with a strong female lead, such as Florence and the Machine, Paramore and Siouxshie and the Bandshees. 

With Arianna being the lead singer, we wanted to create her identity as the crazy, outgoing band member, who almost outshines the other members. This was done through her choice of clothing; although similar style, always stood out in red. It was also achieved by Arianna having more screen time than any other member of the band, to show that the band are clearly backing. The band identity, facing Arianna as the lead singer continued on the album cover and the website, as the album cover featured Arianna on the front and throughout our albums on the website, in the majority of photos Arianna stood out from the band members through her poses and outfits.

This pictures show that Arianna stood out as the lead singer, with a wild side to her in our studio shoots (left and right photos) as well as in our promo shoot (middle photo)

Our band logo and name was another crucial part of our band representation. The band name 'Chaos killed the Dinosaurs' is unusual, and taken from the film Heathers, about a girl who meets a rebel that influences. This can be associated with our edgy lead singer, and the audience may have seen the film, helping them to connect with the band through pop culture. Our band name influenced out logo, as we have a washed out image of a dinosaur in the background creating synergy with the name. The colours red and black also expand onto the logo, our branding colours, used in the music video and on the website too.
 

As a group we came up with the name Revolutionary Records, for our record label name and designed a logo for it which we then added to the bottom of every page on our website, and featured on the back of our album cover, creating synergy between the ancillary texts.


Throughout our A2 lessons, we have learnt that audience interactivity is a crucial part of any marketing campaign to engage them. We therefore provided the audience with a number of opportunities to get involved with our band including; links to twitter, instagram and facebook on our website, competitions and the opportunity to buy merchandise. Social media plays a huge role in our campaign, so we ensured there were social media links on every page of the website to target our audience. Online platforms were exploited as people as less people buy hard copies of music, CD's, due to the availability of online platforms such as Spotify, soundcloud and iTunes. We therefore integrated an iTunes link onto our website to help create another money making opportunity.

This chart shows what has been making the most revenue out of physical and digital music, and concerts. It also shows predictions for what will happen up to 2017. It estimates the most money will be made from live music.

Alice Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

Audience feedback has been gathered throughout the development of the project and it has helped us in decisions relating to our music video, album cover and website. It also helped us after the project in realising that our audience had different interpretations of our music video. 

Our target audience was females aged 15-45, who are looking for something alternative from  mainstream pop music. The target audience is quite a wide age range, because we thought our representation of females would appeal to women of different ages, and our campaign was structured around our target audience.

To gather audience feedback, we used social media platforms to target modern audiences and get them interested in letting us know what they think about our music video. This included posting our survey on twitter and facebook, posting our video on social media sites, interviewing focus groups and we also had a screening at our school where we handed our questionnaires, and all of these methods helped us to gather information on audience feedback.

Screening 
We held a screening in the Seward Studio and people filled in questionnaires our group had handed out.We handed out the questionnaires to 1 person in every 5, so that the results were not biased, and we received really useful feedback that has helped me reflect back on the project. We also filmed a few members of our school who visited the screening who answered a few questions about our music video for us.

I also created a survey on a website called surveymonkey, which I posted on social media websites through my own page, and the bands facebook and twitter pages and people filled in the online survey. The surveys questions allowed me to gather both qualitative and quantitative data:

 The overall rating for our video as a whole was 8.7 out of 10, which I was very happy with; the high rating shows that our video was successful in engaging with an audience, and that the audience reacted positively to the video, giving it a high rating, that I did not expect, suggesting perhaps we were also successful in marketing our target audience.

 This pie chart shows the answers for the question 'What do you think was the best technical aspect of our music video?' and it clearly shows that 50% of people thought the editing and lighting was the least favourite, perhaps meaning we should have put it on more time focusing on the lighting we wanted in our music video.

 One of our survey questions was a question about the genre of our song, because there was room for interpretation for the exact genre of our music video. We decided it was indie pop, but the data from our survey shows that the audience's view on the song genre differed dramatically, which may have been something which affected the marketing of the campaign, because we marketed our band and debut song as indie pop.

The screening with questionnaires, along with an interview with A2 students and our questionnaire, we were able to get a range of audience feed back. Here are some conclusions of our video, with quotes next to some points of some other members of our target audience I interviewed: 

 Positives of the video

• The editing of Kai and the effects used on the dancer
• Camera angles and shot types
• The way that shot speed and style matches the style of the music
• Narrative and lyrics worked in harmony
• Performance set up
• Narrative and performance working together
• Fast paced, montage style editing
• The band branding and artist identity "quirky"
• Hospital scenes were realistic "The bit taking the blood and the needle going in was gross" 

 What could have been improved?

• Clearer narrative
• A more defined narrative, that is not left as open at the end
• More performance shots of members of the band "worked well but made it seem like the band was just backing, so you expect the next song to also on focus on the singer"
• Better grading
• More involvement of other band members in hospital scenes
• Could have made the projection shots clearer/more frequent "I don't think I have the concentration to notice everything on the projection" 

Not only did I interview members of our audience about our music video, but also asked a few members of our female target audience to comment on what they thought of the website and the album cover, and what we could have improved. 


To find out what an audience member thought about the website, I interviewed a female, aged 24 and asked her what she thought of the website.
I have turned her response into the little avatar on the right, and when you click play it will let you know what she thinks.


Quotes on album cover:
"Unusual, but really striking"
"The image on the cover underwater catches my attention, but would not make me think the album was for a band"
"I like that the water theme runs throughout the CD"
"I think the front cover is stunning, but the back cover could have something a little more eye catching to make it stand out just as much"

Alice Question 4: How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

New media technologies were used extensively across all stages of our project; research and planning, construction and the evaluation. 

Research and planning 
During this stage we ensured that our group were kept in the loop, with regular meetings at school, decided in advance, and created a group on facebook to enable us to speak to each other through social media; making it easy to share ideas, or flag up issues.

The very first step to research and planning; deciding the song, was done through the use of playlists on spotify, looking through songs on youtube and posting them to each other on our facebook group, as well as listening to our own music on our iTunes. 

Once the song had been decided we had to brainstorm ideas for the branding of our band, so we looked on fashion blogs and searched videos of other female bands on youtube to inspire us. Using the internet in our initial research tasks was crucial. During the pre-production stage it was also vital because we used websites such as eBay and Amazon to buy props (straitjacket, needles and doctor costume) along with another site called Freecycle that we looked at for free old beds for our hospital scene.
 

This is an image of a moodboard created to identity the style and identity of the band. This was an initial mindmap made.

 
Construction

Music Video
The construction of the video was the most time consuming and the one that strayed from our original idea the most. We had to play around using new media technologies to get the end result with our desired effect. We used professional software and media equipment to aim for a professional looking music video.



The slideshow above talks about which camera we used to shoot out music video. We used the HVR-V1E for the majority of shots, however also ended up using the Canon 5D for our opening focus pull shot of Arianna, because our technician advised us it would be the best camera for a focus pull. For shots that we were not all in, we were able to take turns filming eachother, however for group shots we instructed our camera operator on our desired effect. 

We began post-production by capturing the footage into Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. Adobe Premiere Pro gave us a wide range of editing possibilities, including our shots where we made Kai disappear and making the video look very dreamlike. We were also able to draw on skills we had learnt in the past, to make simple cuts, and transitions.

This gif shows our shot at the end of Kai disappearing, which we did through Adobe Premiere Pro CS5. During the shoot we took a still shot of Kai running, and a still shot of the road empty. On adobe we then cut in between each shots to make it look like Kai was disppearing and using Abobe After Effects added a zoom to both shots. 





Website

The website was crucial as part of our marketing campaign, as it is the 'hub' of the campaign. We took inspiration from Lady Gaga's website. Her use of a washed out image of her in the background was something we liked as a group, so I set the background to our website as our album cover 
image, washed out, however this

looked bland on every page so we later change this to an image of our album cover inside our album cover name, which made the website look more alive and more eye-catching.
The introductory page from our website, which links to the home page, uses an idea we took from Lorde's website. On Lorde's previous website design she used images within the text and our group really liked this style, so we used it on our introductory page, with an image of the album cover appearing through our album name 'I'. This image was made using the album cover image attached with a clipping mask to the I symbol.



Wix: Our website was created on Wix which is a flash based website, rather than an HTML based website. This makes it much easier to use and navigate to create our website, as well as enabling us to create an interactive, visual website. However HTML does also limit the possibilities, as you are not able to code your website and are limited to adding to your website only what Wix offers.

Here is a Prezi of how we used Wix:


We wanted to harness the use of social media as much as possible, so we also created a twitter, facebook and instagram page for our band, in order to promote the band and attract our target audience as much as possible and using modern technologies to target them. These new media technologies are integral to marketing campaigns and all artists use new media technology to promote their band establish their artist image. 

Here is a youtube video of a screencapture I did showing how the links of our website flow easily, and how the website is made interactive through the use of links to other pages to keep the audience interested. I have also showed in the screencapture the use of social media on our website.

Album Cover

For the album cover we used Photoshop and although we were all already quite advanced with the use of Photoshop, from GCSE and AS level projects our skills were developed even further and we had to learn how to remove shadows from a persons face, and ensure our pictures all fit within the digipack template.

Our promotional and inside album photographs were shot in the Seward studio, each photo taken by another band member, as we were never all in one shot. We used the seward studio to enable us to adjust the lighting easily and give us enough space to splash some water around.

One effect we used designing our album cover, was the 'skin smoother effect' on Adobe Photoshop. This was done by applying the effect to each person individually, and the programme automatically smooths their skin and makes it look softer. We wanted this effect to make every band member stand out, but at the same time looking neutral. 






Evaluation
All our group members used Web 2.0, have facebook accounts and are able to access twitter and instagram. This was useful in the evaluation stages of the product as we were all able to promote our video across different social media sites. 

We wanted to get feedback from our target audience, as well as our secondary audience (males, aged 15-45). This was done through using surveymonkey, a survey site on the web that you can share on social media sites and email to friends and family. Surveymonkey also enabled us to turn our feedback in visual answers, such as pie charts and bar charts. 

A trailer was made by other members in my group to promote the screening in the media studio, to encourage people to come to the Seward Studio and watch our videos, enabling us to gather audience feedback in the process. On top of this, posters were also put up around school that had been made on Adobe Photoshop, to promote the screening. 

The poster made by members of my group to
promote the screening.

A facebook event was also created by our whole media year, on which we then invited other members of our school to promote the screening further and increase the number of people attending. Our group all posted the video on Facebook and twitter to use a multiplatform marketing strategy.